[link]

My piece is a breezy 750 word shriek of narrativist pain and design fervor. Can’t wait to read the rest of them.

And, unfortunately, it doesn’t look like you’re alone. The page is also missing Lee Sheldon, Mark Keavney, Sean Thorne, Nick Fortugno, and Teri Rueb from the list of authors. Perhaps we hit some sort of upper maximum? Anyway, Pat and I are writing to the press about it.

As for length, it probably won’t actually get to 800 pages, since we’ll be using the same design we used for First Person. It’s two-column, and on larger paper than the usual MIT book. I think the 800 page estimate is based on their usual layout.

I’ll see if I can’t find places to post that link that might generate some sales.

I’m not surprised you reached 800 pages, either. Complete games like Puppetland and Munchausen (the two that I’ve read thus far) are books in their own right!

Also, it looks like MITP now has a catalog page for Second Person online, with an ISBN and a tentative November publication date.

Reading the intro paragraphs, I’m happy to see I was fairly close to the over arching topic. What strikes me reading the Collosal Cave example is that having the responsiblity of navigating those twisty little passages soley put on “you” (that is me, or whomever is playing) is a bit of a turn-off for all but the niche hardcore enthusiast. I think the mainstream would prefer having some direction and initial momentum int he form of a 3rd person character platform through which their agency can be nurtured. This is the commercial and aethetic promise of interactive drama.

On a slightly tangential note, maybe this is worth another post, but do you all think “Drama Game” is a good term to describe Facade, Storytron products, Utopia ect? It certainly is more implicative to people who already play games and who are in the industry, but may be alienatating to non-gamers who automatically see games a childish or not enjoyable to them. What do you all think?

I can’t say for sure when the book will be out. It’s been with the MIT Press production people since last year, and I believe is currently in copyediting. Layout will still have to take place, and even when that’s completed there will still be months of printing, binding, and shipping before it appears in stores. So, to make a long story short, I’ve got my fingers crossed for fall.

Patrick, it strikes me that you might enjoy these paragraphs from the book’s introduction, written by Pat Harrigan (the book’s lead editor):

By design, the subject of most of Second Person’s contributors is, centrally, “you.” This is because you are the person for whom the story is being told, and because the roles discussed in this book will for the most part be filled by you. Colossal Cave Adventure, the first computer text adventure, famously addresses the reader, “You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.” The Cave of Time, the first Choose Your Own Adventure book, announces that, “The adventures you take are a result of your choice. You are responsible because you choose!” Jeremy Douglass, in his essay here, points out that even the most “first person” of game experiences — the 3D virtual reality that reaches its apotheosis in room-sized CAVE displays — serves the same function as the textual second person: simulated immediacy.

Outside these caves, tabletop role-playing games speak directly to you as well; to pick only one example, Jonathan Tweet’s Over the Edge tells us: This game is a coded message. You will decode the message in your dreams and execute its instructions in the spaces between moments of will. Neither you nor I will ever know the contents of the message.